Offical.. no one is stereotyping you for wearing a gold/silver chain geez...

RBG and HBC make fun of everybody on the board at one point or another.. it's never serious..

Secondly.. what do u mean defend yourself? And people getting personal.. you mean to tell me that people have never joked around in your presence? Or tried to make you or anyone see how silly a statement may sound? Come on now it’s all in jest..

You can’t be that sensitive if you’re going to be an attorney..

---

The point that I'm making is this.. you argued that renting is a better option for most people.. I don’t understand why you don’t think it is a better investment to buy property before investing into stocks/bonds etc..

In the four yrs that I’ve rented an apt I found myself spending close to 80k that will never be recouped.. and I’ll never benefit from that.. it wasn’t an investment.. it was a waste of money…and I wasn’t happy in that situation…

if a person buys a home (even with a 40k salary for example) they would find themselves paying less than what they would to rent in all probability.. three yrs down the line they can refinance or rent their home out if they want to move into something bigger and better… that is the beginning of wealth building and financial security

you have to have somewhere to live right? Why not own it? Unless you’re going to live in a “bad” area or small city 9 out of 10 you’re going to spend at least 800-1k for a nice apt.. why not put that same money into a mortgage?

I have to disagree on the whole American dream/buy a house theory. I’m against buying homes to “build wealth,” as far as helping black people goes. I think the discussion so far has been talking about the wrong type of wealth, (i.e. monetary) which doesn’t necessarily follow from buying a home btw.

It just seems to me that you have this attitude that we’re ‘whitewashed’ because we want to buy homes.. because we want to get professional degrees (which u’re about to do I might add) but I don’t believe that anyone thinks they’re “better” than any of our brothas and sistas that have chosen a different path than we have.. we are just trying to help them- those that want to be helped

Some people may think you’re ‘white washed’ because you’re overseas working for an international law firm… most black folks aren’t even interested in that kind of thing (I say that because I've studied it for yrs..and i've heard that for yrs).. does that make you less than a black man? I think not.. you’ve already passed judgments and formed your opinions about us..and it really doesn’t make any sense

i'm done, Black, we just disagree. i didn't pass judgement on anyone; i just like to argue. the time difference makes it difficult for me to get on when y'all are on... i don't think i'm being sensitive, but when i come in to work, and i see this *&^% i can't respond to cause i'm too busy... i can't get back at y'all, with my argument or responses to the jabs.

Ok, the picture, it’s 8 years old. So yeah, I did wear a silver chain and my hat backwards in high school…sue me.

And on that same topic, you call me a “gold chain man,” I can’t say I know what that is, but I’m assuming you’re claiming me to be some type of thug or flashy, materialistic person; that’s not the case. But yet you stereotype me, and in next couple of day you’re going to be on talking about how white people always judging us or something along those lines…check that.

Anyway, I’m done playing devil’s advocate. I think I put up a good one, but it’s obvious you’re not getting what I’m saying, plus it’s getting personal, and i'm not on often enough to defend myself. My argument never was don’t buy houses. I said, from the beginning, that it was secondary…get money first, get your business first, then when you’re in a better position, buy a house.

It’s a stifling investment; I’m saying, initially, it’s better to rent. I just think, if my mother didn’t get her magazine off the ground, cause she decided to stay on a journalist’s salary, to pay a mortgage.

this one has nothing to do with the socio-economic status of parents; this is pure racism. check it out

December 12, 2002What's in a Name? Perhaps Plenty if You're a Job SeekerBy ALAN B. KRUEGER

HAT'S in a name? Evidently plenty if you are looking for a job.

To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston and Chicago and submitted multiple résumés from phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names on the résumés, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among whites.

So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from the same pool of want ads and had equivalent résumés. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women, white women, black men and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four résumés were typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews.

No single employer was sent two identical résumés, and the names on the résumés were randomly assigned, so applicants with black- and white-sounding names applied for the same set of jobs with the same set of résumés.

Apart from their names, applicants had the same experience, education and skills, so employers had no reason to distinguish among them.

The results are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7 percent of those with black-sounding names.

Within racial groups, applications with men's or women's names were equally likely to result in calls for interviews, providing little evidence of discrimination based on sex in these entry-level jobs.

There were significant differences in interview-request rates among the nine names associated with black women, but not among the names within each of the other groups.

At the low end, the interview-request rate was 2.2 percent for Aisha, 3.8 percent for Keisha and 5.4 percent for Tamika, compared with 9.1 percent for Kenya and Latonya and 10.5 percent for Ebony.

Only part of this variability reflects chance differences resulting from sampling, although the authors have not been able to find a good explanation for the wide range. Thus it is important that the names chosen for black women were not uncommon; they represent 7.1 percent of all names listed on Massachusetts birth certificates for black girls from 1974 to 1979.

The 50 percent advantage in interview requests for white-sounding names held in both Boston and Chicago, and for both men and women.

This discrepancy complements findings from earlier studies in which researchers sent a small number of matched black and white "auditors" to apply for jobs in person. Typically, though not always, the black job seekers were less likely to be invited for an interview or offered a job.

Those findings, however, were criticized because the applicants knew the intention of the study and might have behaved differently. In addition, the auditors might not have been well matched with the jobs in question; they could have been overqualified or underqualified.

Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan's study is less susceptible to these concerns. First, they used a large number of names and inanimate résumés. Second, the job openings involved administrative, sales, clerical and managerial positions, and they submitted résumés patterned after real résumés of people who were actually seeking similar jobs.

Their most alarming finding is that the likelihood of being called for an interview rises sharply with an applicant's credentials — like experience and honors — for those with white-sounding names, but much less for those with black-sounding names. A grave concern is that this phenomenon may be damping the incentives for blacks to acquire job skills, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates prejudice and misallocates resources.

Two main theories explain labor market discrimination. One, known as taste-based discrimination, posits that employers — or customers, co-workers or supervisors — have a preference against hiring minority applicants, even if they know they are equally productive.

The other, known as statistical discrimination, assumes that employers personally harbor no racial animus but cannot perfectly predict workers' productivity. In this case, an employer assessing an applicant would assign some weight to the average performance of the person's racial group, instead of basing the judgment solely on the individual's merits.

A difference between these models is that employers sacrifice profits to indulge in taste-based discrimination, while, in principle, statistical discrimination, if based on accurate information, can help the bottom line. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan cannot distinguish between the models — and both may be applicable — but they suspect that their finding that employers in heavily black areas of Chicago are less likely to discriminate against black-sounding names augurs for taste-based discrimination.

Nevertheless, either rationale for discrimination is illegal and prohibited.

"That which we call a rose," Juliet said, "by any other name would smell as sweet." An organization like the Civil Rights Commission or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could perform a service if it routinely monitored discrimination by conducting audit studies similar to Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan's.